When ‘Shall Issue’ legislation took effect in Iowa in 2011, after Iowa Gun Owners passed it the year earlier as a byproduct of our efforts to pass Constitutional Carry, localities in Iowa went nuts.

Many fell for the hype from the media as well as the League of Municipalities and became convinced that with Iowans having easier access to obtaining a concealed carry permit, Iowa’s Main Streets would become the site of duels or acts of vigilante violence.

Of course, Iowa Gun Owners knew this would never happen, as did everyone else with two brain cells. But power hungry mayors and city council members, looking to flex their muscles, began work on passing ordinances to prohibit guns on city property.

All of this was being done in violation of Iowa Code 724.28, which states that local municipalities can not pass gun control laws that are more restrictive that state law. But Attorney General Tom Miller issued a finding supporting the municipalities, telling the state that he would not prosecute localities for violating the state’s pre-emption law.

(The legislature strengthened the state’s preemption law in 2017, as a rider to our Stand-Your-Ground law, which more or less ended these efforts by city mayors to curtail the Second Amendment at the municipal level. Learn more about that fight, here.) (HOTLINK)

And with Senate Democrats refusing to move any gun bill in their chamber, and House Republicans refusing to address this issue even if the Senate would advance the bill, the only option for Iowa Gun Owners was to battle these town gun ban proposals in town halls all over the state.

Of course, this involved actual work, which is why in the dozen plus local gun bans that the Dorr Brothers shot down for Iowa Gun Owners members, we never saw the Iowa Firearms Coalition.

While we can’t detail every town gun ban that the Dorr Brothers stopped for Iowa Gun Owners members, as that would be a twenty page article, these are some of the ones that really stood out.

In April of 2014, an IGO lifetime member from George, IA informed us that the City of George (NW IA) was about to have their final reading of what we dubbed the ‘Boss Hogg Ordinance.’

The language in George would make it a criminal violation for anyone to carry a firearm on ‘city property’ — meaning George’s parks, baseball fields, pool complex and much more would be off limits to gun owners — unless you were an ‘elected official.’

In other words, the Mayor and City Council of George would be immune form the very legislation that they were determined to force gun owners in ‘their’ town to live in!

The Dorr Brothers rolled out what would become a standard program for dealing with gun bans like this, once the threat was verified. While Aaron deployed multiple rounds of emails across the state, urging gun owners to contact the council, Chris rolled a similar program on Iowa Gun Owners’ Facebook page.

Those steps complete, Aaron then deployed a round of ‘robo calls’ to every Iowa Gun Owners supporter in a 50 miles radius. Finally, three days before the scheduled vote on this ordinance, Aaron and Chris and a team of IGO volunteers from the area passed out flyers door-to-door in George.

The results were explosive!

The council pulled the proposal from their agenda, immediately. But the calls and emails kept pouring in to the council’s office.

As you saw in the picture above, the council then CANCELLED their scheduled meeting, afraid of the reaction from local gun owners.

Iowa Gun Owners was told that the town clerk and members of the council actually left town, and hung out in Sioux Falls, SD for a few days, waiting for the heat to die down before returning home!

After firing off an email to IGO members urging them to call the city council and protest, the Dorrs and some IGO volunteers headed to Tama, to pass out flyers city wide. Along the way, Chris ran the social media program, boosting a post that was seen by thousands of local gun owners in just a few hours.

Meanwhile, Aaron tipped off local media outlets. ABC5, bored of non stop election coverage, sent a reporter to Tama who covered the event and interviewed Aaron. They were on hand when the city council voted this language down later that night, after apologizing to the throng of gun owners who showed up.

Read more about this fight here, where you’ll see Aaron and Chris in the background.

The 35 gun owners who showed up that night in Tama were overjoyed to see their local petty tyrannts humilitated in front of the state, thanks to the efforts of the Dorr Brothers and ABC5.

Immediately upon arriving back in the IGO office, the Dorr Brothers launched a full scale mobilization program just like they did in George.

They utilized robo calls, emails, a series of Facebook alerts, and a door to door literature drop, informing citizens of what Mayor Pfeiffer was trying to do.

It turned out that the McArtors were not the only citizens that the Mayor and city council were harassing in this town of 149 people.

Two weeks after the Dorr Brothers first met with the McArtors, the city dropped their attempted ordinance after an avalanche of angry calls from gun owners.

It turned out that Mayor Pfeiffer wasn’t the tough guy that he thought he was, once hundreds of gun owners started calling and emailing the town council!

And that’s all that matters! Another town gun ban defeated!

Check out the victory video that we shot that night on Kalona’s Main St. (a video that was seen by over 143,000 gun owners) by clicking here or on the image!

Each victory that IGO scored at the city level was a shot across the bow at other mayors and council members.

It became obvious that no mayor was safe…if there was going to be an effort to criminalize gun owners for doing nothing wrong…the Dorr Brothers were coming, and they were bringing Iowa Gun Owners along with them.

Not every mayor got the memo.

Within 10 minutes of Mayor Simmerman crying ‘uncle,’ Aaron went live and made sure that almost 40,000 gun owners learned what a power hungry tyrant the mayor was.

It’s an old video, and some of our equipment wasn’t working well that night because it was COLD, but you can still see this video on the IGO Facebook page or by clicking the image below.

There was one more Mayor that needed to be taught a lesson in 2015 — and this would turn out to be the most successful operation that the Dorr Brothers conducted against a power hungry mayor.

Just a few miles away from Iowa City you’ll find North Liberty.

It’s a beautiful town, and there are legions of gun owners in and around North Liberty.

But it’s also home of some of the most aggressive gun-grabbers in the state legislature due to the area’s district dynamics.

So it was no surprise when then-Mayor Amy Nielsen launched her attack against gun owners. And it was no surprise that she drafted the nastiest proposal that we’d ever seen  — banning not just guns but knives, pepper spray, stun guns, and every other self-defense item she could think of!

Aaron and Chris knew that they were going to have to hit hard, to stop this proposal.

And they did.

In addition to emails, robo calls, and literature drops, the Dorrs found special funding from outraged gun owners in the area who gave them a special budget to boost Facebook videos and meme posts into the area.

This gave Iowa Gun Owners almost saturation level exposure to this issue, and based on

the angry phone calls that Aaron received in his office from council members before the meeting even took place, the Dorrs knew this was going to be a hot fight!

The council met in late 2015, in a council meeting that was attended by over 100 angry gun owners.

Chris took the picture below, from the doorway of the council meeting room, showing Aaron addressing the council.

But what you can’t see are the 45 gun owners behind him, who couldn’t even fit in the room!

Every single person who spoke out that night spoke against Mayor Nielsen’s ordinance!

Nielsen began to lose control, ordering the police to drag a Vietnam veteran out of the room for daring to ask when he could address the council before he was recognized to speak!

It was outrageous.

Aaron said, “The calls will stop. But this is our second time doing this in just two weeks, if we have to come back a third time, we’re bringing 500 gun owners with us.”

Honestly, it only made the victory that much sweeter!

Making sure 263,000 gun owners in Iowa heard what a power hungry tyrant Amy Nielsen was didn’t hurt either!

You can still watch that video yourself, right here.

North Liberty was the last town that tried to pass one of these local gun bans for several years.

The word had finally gotten out.

It was just too dangerous, politically, for a mayor to try to sneak in a gun control proposal.

As we mentioned earlier in this article, the state legislature finally tightened up on Iowa code 724.28 — the state’s preemption law — by adding some language onto IGO’s Stand-Your-Ground law in 2017, more or less ending these local attacks.